On several occasions, particularly on the periphery of the Habsburg Empire during the 17th and 18th centuries, dead people were suspected of being revenants or vampires, and consequently dug up and destroyed. Some contemporary authors named this phenomenon Magia Posthuma. This blog is dedicated to understanding what happened and why.

Monday, 24 January 2011

An anti-vampire

In a recent book, Necrophilia: Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects by Anil Aggrawal (CRC Press), one can find this 'point to ponder':

'A necrophile may be called the very opposite of the legendary vampire. While the term vampire generally refers to a dead person (usually referred to as the "undead") disturbing the living, the necrophile is a living person disturbing the dead! In this sense, a necrophile may be referred to as an anti-vampire.' (p. 4)

I am not sure what the purpose of this observation is, but obviously anyone who 'disturbs the dead', even for various non-sexual reasons, must qualify as an 'anti-vampire'. And logically, I must conclude that I like everyone else who, as far as I am aware of, are not involved in disturbing the dead, can now say: I am not an anti-vampire...

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Magia Posthuma is the title of a book written by the Catholic lawyer Karl Ferdinand von Schertz in 1704. In the book von Schertz examines the case of a spectre that roamed about and harmed the living. Several of these cases were known in Moravia where von Schertz published his book, as well as in neighbouring areas. Only two decades later, a similar case was investigated by Austrian officials in North Eastern Serbia. The local people called the spectre a vampire. This incident inspired the deacon Michael Ranft to publish a study on the mastication of the dead. Just a few years later, in 1732, another case of vampirism was investigated in Serbia. Reports of this investigation were published throughout Europe with the consequence that the interest in vampires exploded. Vampires became the topic of numerous learned articles and books. Cases of magia posthuma or vampirism, however, kept occurring. In 1755 empress Maria Theresa aided by her court physician Gerard van Swieten began passing laws against the exhumation and destruction of corpses as well as other acts of superstition. Within decades, however, vampires caught the imagination of poets and authors of gothic fiction. Subsequently popularized by Bram Stoker in his 1897 novel Dracula and numerous movies, vampires have become part of everyday modern mythology, but the historical and cultural background has not yet been fully explored and understood. In fact, the modern conception of the vampiric count bears little or no resemblance to the revenants of the 18th century, and several modern books rather obscure than enlighten us on the early modern European revenants and vampires. This blog is an informal and personal contribution to the enterprise of exploring and understanding what happened and why.